Remmem
by CephalonMadrona
Summary: Long dormant creativity springs forth, marred by centuries of violence: an artist, born of strive and conflict, and yet confused as to his seemingly pointless urge to create. This is a small segment of his life.


Every day, it seemed, he was put to use. He was a simple marine among the hoard of Grineer, just barely high enough in the rankings to be made into cannon fodder, his body so malformed that most of his internal organs were machines of steel and wires...and yet, he served his Queens with unflinching loyalty, even if his job was to clean up the remains of his countless fallen brothers. While a grim duty for most and a simple chore for Grineer like him, he did have his moments of enjoyment, such as when he was informed that his next assignment was to clean a ship that had been depopulated by a lone Tenno.

As he stepped into the corridors and worked with fellow cleaning crew, some even sharing his face, none shared the smile he had as he secretly stashed some of the still-fresh remains away in small alcoves around the ship. They were mere janitors, and security was light: so long as their task was done, most didn't care how. And so he went on, picking up parts of his fallen siblings that still had some use to them. When the day's job was completed, he had amassed several containers of still-warm bodies, and still more parts. As they left the ship and returned to their base, he was still smiling. Most assumed he was mad, while some saw him as an especially loyal troop, doing his tasks with a smile, all day long. Yet he had his secret hobby, his fun little project that nobody knew of.

As they disembarked, nobody minded as he dragged his mysterious containers away to the nearest furnace chamber. Once inside and beyond anyone's observation, he pried a well-worn and very loose vent from the wall, rolling the containers down the slightly sloped ventilation shaft and into the chamber beyond. He stepped into the shaft and shut the vent behind him, slowly and quietly removing his standard-issue armor as he descended into the vent, until he was bare, save for his jumpsuit. The clone finally met his destination: a central ventilation chamber, one that piped cooler air into the sweltering furnace chamber, the somewhat large chamber holding several well-sealed containers, each one filled to the brim with Grineer remains. He then lifted a small supply container and fished out his personal tools, consisting of a well-maintained Sheev, a welding torch, a mallet, and a cobbled-together brush, made from shredded jumpsuits, armor straps, and the rare few tufts of fur he managed to salvage from any of his assignments. With his tools in hand, he unsealed the oldest of the barrels and drug it along one of the connected shafts.

When he found an appropriate spot within the large, breezy shaft, he reached into the barrel and fished out a wet hunk of what was once a thigh, beating it down against the floor with a mallet, mashing the chunk of clone flesh into a paste, a large, fresh pool of blood beneath him. He sparked the torch and proceeded to heat the surface before him, the dust and metal blackening under the steady, even heat of the tool, until he had a rough, malformed square of black, stained into the wall. He then took his Sheev and started carving into the metal of the wall before him, his work not crude and violent, but slow, patient, and even skilled as he used his bloodied mallet to hammer into the back of his Sheev, using it as a chisel to carve elegant, flowing lines and small pockmarks. Hours and hours went by, until at last, he had done it: etched into the burnished metal of the wall was a nearly perfectly accurate still of security footage he had seen during his briefing, consisting of a sleek, slender, gold-gilded Tenno, a Banshee, rending one of his brothers in half with a set of vicious, elegant claws set upon the tops of hands. Finally, he used his brush, dipping it into the gore pooled around his feet and carefully, delicately filling in the etched lines, adding thickness where it was needed to portray detail, the blood drying quickly under the heat of the still-warm metal.

More hours went by, and the lone Grineer stepped back, looking to his most recent work with a smile of satisfaction: the scene from the screen now lay, painted, etched and burned into the metal of the ventilation shaft. Later, he would paint over it with smuggled dyes, but for now, this was good enough. As he took his tools and "paint" back with him, his feet walked over countless pools of dark, dry blood, and his eyes glossed over his previous works, which lined the ventilation shaft in it's entirety, with both walls covered in elegant depictions of Tenno slaughter. He knelt to put his tools away, and as he did so, he gazed fondly over his Sheev, brushing his gloved fingers over the word etched into the base of the tool: he couldn't read much, but he did know what this singular phrase meant. He muttered to himself, the foreign word passing his lips, butchered as it was, but still holding it's meaning: _"Remmem". _

He left his tools there and re-adorned his armor, exiting his secret lair and returning to his duties, ready for another assignment, all while the memories of his works flashed in his head. He didn't know why he was compelled to do this, he didn't know why he had these skills, but he knew that what he did felt right, as right as serving his Queens, as right as fighting for his siblings, as right as throwing himself into danger and staring death in the face...and he would continue to work, until he himself became crimson artwork upon the ground, or even upon the walls and ceilings. He was fine with this, save for his only regret: that he wouldn't be there to immortalize his own end.

AN: My first attempt at fiction in this canon. Lorebreaking or no, the idea came to me, and I just felt I needed to write it down. I hope someone out there gets some enjoyment out of this.


End file.
